OVERVIEW: There is only one highly rated passage in 1 & 2 Kings that is potentially related to the question, what happens when people die?, seen in section A (and is rated 4). This verse describes the wrath of God that may not be quenched. There are seven verses in section B that refer to death as being restful, similar to sleep, present with ancestors, and called Sheol.
The third group of passages refer to three different occasions where the dead were raised back to life. Section D refers to Elijah going up to heaven in a whirlwind. The next section includes two verses related to mediums and spiritists as being detestable to God. The last one includes a quote of King David to his son, Solomon (the future king) regarding his death, and this section also includes a passage that refers to blotting out the name of Israel. Each of these remaining sixteen verses have been rated 3.
Section A: A wrath against them that won’t be quenched
a) “Because they have forsaken Me and burned incense to other gods, that they might provoke Me to anger with all the works of their hands. Therefore My wrath shall be aroused against this place and shall not be quenched” (2 Kings 22:17, NKJV).
What place, or who, was God referring to when he prophesied through Huldah, the prophetess, that “God would bring evil on the place and on its inhabitants” (2 Kings 22:14-16)? Verse 14 tells us that a priest and four others went to see Huldah, and that she lived in Jerusalem. It is evident in this passage that the prophecy of an unquenchable wrath would be directed at Jerusalem due to its great evil and a long period of sin occurring.
This passage does not mean that God’s anger and calamity against Jerusalem would never end. This instance of “unquenchable wrath” does not refer to an eternally ongoing fire of wrath. Instead, it means that the fate of Judah is settled; an exile would happen, and it is too late to avoid the upcoming military defeat. This hellish outcome obviously did come to an end with the nation’s return to Jerusalem. This warning through Huldah that Jerusalem and its people will have a divine wrath against her such that it “shall not be quenched” was never intended to apply forever, and after the exile, because God knew there would be those who followed him and would thus be spared from some type of unquenchable fire in the afterlife. The focus of “unquenchable” in v. 17 is on the reaction of the inhabitants of Jerusalem who would not be able to “put the fire out” or change God’s mind about exile.
There are many passages throughout Scripture that describe either the nature of the human soul, or the nature of final punishment in hell, in a way that would cause a person to affirm this instance in Second Kings of “shall not be quenched” before a certain point in time may also apply to the unquenchable fire of hell. An “unquenchable” hell should not suggest that God won’t quench the fire; but rather, that people in hell are not capable of quenching the fiery agony. Conditional immortality is a doctrine that asserts by inference that no inhabitant of hell would be able to quench the fire, remove the danger, or provide themselves an immortality that has as its source someone other than God. It affirms that only holy persons live forever. The unrepentant and divinely unforgiven person has no power to affect the punishment of hell (i.e., a real death). Only the creator, not a creature, can quench the torment.
Section B: Death is a rest in peace, with others also asleep, in Sheol
See Genesis (Sections B and C); Numbers (Sections A and B); Deuteronomy (Section F); and 1 & 2 Samuel (Section C) for more discussion on the world of the dead.
a) “Solomon rested with his ancestors and was buried in the city of his father David” (1 Kings 11:43, CSB). This verse also implies that Solomon’s invisible essence went to Sheol (after assessing previous passages that describe where the heart/mind goes at death).
b) “Manasseh slept with his fathers, and was buried in the garden” (2 Kings 21:18, KJV). Since it was King Manasseh’s sins and abominations that caused God to decide to bring great calamity onto Jerusalem and Judah (2 Kings 21:11-16), even Manasseh, “who acted more wickedly than any other Amorite” (2 Kings 21:11) went to Sheol. The heart/minds of all the dead go to Sheol.
c) “Jehoiakim rested with his ancestors. And Jehoiachin his son succeeded him as king” (2 Kings 24:6, NIV). It is obvious from this verse that the son became king only after his father had died, which is undoubtedly what “rested with his ancestors” indicates (at least).
d) “When my lord the king rests with his fathers” (1 Kings 1:21, NKJV) – quoting Bathsheba, speaking to David. The wife of King David knew about Sheol being a place of rest for generations of deceased people.
e) “Do not let his gray hair go down to Sheol in peace” (1 Kings 2:6, NASB) – quoting David, speaking to Solomon. The meaning of this verse is not that Sheol can be turbulent, or not peaceful, for some of the deceased. Rather, David told Solomon that Joab was to be “punished” (1 Kings 2:9), that it should be bloody, and that the rest of his days should be tumultuous.
f) “You must bring his gray head down with blood to Sheol” (1 Kings 2:9, NRSV) – quoting David, speaking to Solomon. The references to Sheol, at least for David, seem to have become routine when the context is death.
g) “That David slept with his fathers and that Joab the commander of the army was dead” (1 Kings 11:21, ESV). When the phrase “slept with his fathers” (or “rested with his ancestors”) is contrasted with just saying “he was dead,” as seen in this verse above, it probably shows that the writer of First Kings understood Sheol to mean more than just someone died. This verse does not mean that Joab died without going to Sheol, as David did.
Section C: Raising the dead back to life
a) “The child was dead … the child opened his eyes” (2 Kings 4:32,35, MLV).
b) “They threw the man’s body into Elisha’s tomb. When the body touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet” (2 Kings 13:21, NIV).
c) “’Let this boy’s life return to him’ … and the life of the boy returned to him and he revived” (1 Kings 17:21-22, NASB) – Quoting Elijah in v. 21 with the mother of a dead son who was raised back to life.
The Hebrew word, nephesh, appears in 1 Kings 17:21 (which is often translated as soul) and can refer to the resumption of breathing, as understood back then (prior to Greek conceptions of an actual entity leaving and returning to one’s body). H.W. Wolff observes (in Anthropology of the Old Testament, 1974, p. 20) that “when there is a mention of the ‘departing’ of the nephesh from a man or of its ‘return,’ the basic idea . . . is of the concrete notion of the ceasing and restoration of the breathing.”
D.W. Mork agrees, writing in The Biblical Meaning of Man (1967, p. 35) that, “nephesh here [in 1 Kings 17:21-22 which he quotes in the same sentence] means only the child’s life, his vitality which makes him a living human being.” E. Jacob also agrees, writing the following under “Death” in the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (1962, vol.1, 802): “The ‘departure’ of the nephesh must be viewed as a figure of speech, for it does not continue to exist independently of the body, but dies with it. No Biblical text authorizes the statement that the ‘soul’ is separated from the body at the moment of death.”
Therefore, it is reasonable to characterize the belief of Elijah, when he says “his nephesh return to his body, after leaving it” to be a Hebrew idiom in the sense of the boy, at death, taking his last gasp of air. The immediate context supports this view: 1 Kings 17:17 says, “there was no breath left in him” (referring to the stopping of his breathing). Cessation of breathing meant loss of nephesh — revival of breathing meant return of nephesh, or his life. The KJV translates nephesh (which appears 753 times in the OT) as “life” 117 times.
Section D: The death of Elijah
a) “The time came for the Lord to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elijah and Elisha set out from Gilgal … They kept talking as they walked on; then suddenly a chariot of fire pulled by horses of fire came between them, and Elijah was taken up to heaven by a whirlwind” (2 Kings 2:1,11, GNT). Did Elijah die that day? Or did he remain alive? Or, alternatively, is it possible that Elijah experienced both? That is, could he have died, and then experienced a bodily resurrection soon afterward? These questions are relevant given the prophecy at Malachi 4:5 that says God will send Elijah back to earth prior to the last day, or the day of the Lord, which implies a resurrection from the dead.
Section E: Mediums and spiritists are doing evil
See Leviticus (Section A) and Deuteronomy (Section E) for more discussion on mediums.
a) “He … used witchcraft, and consulted spiritists and mediums. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord” (2 Kings 21:6, NKJV).
b) “In order to enforce the laws written in the book that the High Priest Hilkiah had found in the Temple, King Josiah removed from Jerusalem and the rest of Judah all the mediums and fortunetellers, and all the household gods, idols, and all other pagan objects of worship” (2 Kings 23:24, GNT).
Section F: Death and blotting out the name of Israel
a) “I [David] am going the way of all the earth” (1 Kings 2:2, MLV).
See the study here on “Joshua/Judges” for discussion of this phrase that probably is describing the nature of human death.
b) “But the Lord had not said that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, so he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam” (2 Kings 14:27, NRSV).
See Exodus (Section A) and Deuteronomy (Section B) for more discussion of “blotting out the name.”
Ω Ω Ω
Quoted Passages in 1 & 2 Kings (17 total / 1 highly rated verse):
Rating of 5:
None
Rating of 4:
2 Kings 22:17
Rating of 3:
1 Kings 2:2
1 Kings 11:43
2 Kings 21:18
2 Kings 24:
1 Kings 1:21
1 Kings 11:21
1 Kings 2:6
1 Kings 2:9
2 Kings 4:32,35
2 Kings 13:21
1 Kings 17:17
1 Kings 17:21-22
2 Kings 2:1,11
2 Kings 21:6
2 Kings 23:24
2 Kings 14:27
Rating of 2:
1 Kings 2:2
1 Kings 2:10
1 Kings 2:37
1 Kings 4:29
1 Kings 8:27
1 Kings 13:34
1 Kings 17:17
1 Kings 21:5
2 Kings 1:10
2 Kings 19:15
2 Kings 23:10